Susie Biehl

Assemblage, Collage, Exploration and Accumulation...

I find discards from man and nature and bring them to life in interesting and unusual compositions. I collect things from streets and alleys, flea markets and antique stores, and one of my favorite suppliers - construction demolition sights. Packing materials are another obsession of mine. So many of these materials are beautifully engineered, with such a short lifespan, then on to feed landfills.

I give life to found objects and linger over their playfulness with each other in my pieces. I like to evoke happiness and curiosity to my viewers. I never lose the delight in finding beauty in everyday objects and things regarded as just plain junk. I love the textures, colors and interesting juxtaposition of my found and recycled finds.... and the relationships they find with each other.

Gina Smith Caswell

Over the years I have primarily painted floral images. But I also have explored abstraction, water imagery, and portraiture. I work only in oil paints. I enjoy exploring pattern, color and texture.

Earl Chuvarsky

To put it simply, I make pretty things.

Earl Chuvarsky is a fifth generation Colorado native and trained artist who has been showing professionally since 2010 but has been creating for much, much, longer. Chuvarsky cut his teeth with an eight month stint in the heart of the Santa Fe Arts District of Denver before showing the majority of the year in various galleries across the country. Rooted deeply in traditional working methods while focusing on contemporary subject matter Chuvarsky's work concentrates on the continual examination of the placement of subjects within the picture plane, and the feeling it invokes.

Rochelle Dammel

Life is about growing. Each experience, situation, and phase of life offers a unique opportunity to reach our highest potential, turn towards our passions and discover what we can do to be better humans. How can we strive to be the best people we can be no matter our age, background and life experiences?

As I move and mix paint to add complexity and layers to my art, I am reminded of the complexity and layering we add to ourselves as we experience life. Through my work, I attempt to illustrate and document this beautiful process.

I like to begin my paintings with an under-painting that includes drips and many colors. This frees me to look for spontaneous shapes and color combinations that inspire and “talk” to me. I develop the painting by keeping the best parts and working the other areas until they too, are the best they can be.

Alissa Davies

I am interested in the ways that the art-making process reveals effective methods and tools for navigating the life-making process. The messages include and are not limited to: staying open to the unknown, staying with the ugly stages of a painting (and of life), being curious and exploratory, relishing in beauty and harmony, risking, and knowing when to stop.

My paintings emerge from an intuitive place, intermingling with my knowledge of color theory, composition, and painting techniques. Each piece is generated spontaneously, taking cues from my inner world and what I am drawn to in the moment. Finding flow is what my creative process is based in, while paying homage to painting "rules" that make a piece interesting to a viewers eye. As a painting progresses I am interested in the interplay of form and the harmony of colors, while staying true to the organic forming of shapes and textures. Play, experimentation, movement and curiosity guide my process.

Donny Dixon

I create what I consider “fire” paintings; these pieces are the aftermath between fire and canvas. These are based around ideas of the impermanence of man and the continuity of the world. Fire is one of the most powerful primal forces on this planet. Fire destroys as much as it creates; it gives life as easily as it can take it away. These pieces are meant to evoke feelings of transition; of the beginning and of the end. I want to envelop my paintings with the idea that I can create something beautiful out of such a destructive force. The images you are seeing are just the aftermath of the fire; an echo of the action that took place. Everything in this world is transitory; it will all come and go, leaving something new in its place.

When I paint using oils, it is fear that comes out, a fear of the unknown, of what will be waiting for me in the not-too-distant future. It is in these pieces that a dreamlike world becomes reality. This is a fear that comes from questioning my morals and beliefs, and one that hopes for something better, but knows it might never come.

Joni Emily

Joni Emily

It is the intangibles of a scene or subject that inspire my contemporary oil paintings. Like showing the fierce paddling of a kayaker struggling against a creek’s high water, or the dramatic cloud formations in the sky created during a thunder storm, or the rancher’s pained look of concern while waiting on news of his livestock during a snow storm.

Viewers can see these insights in my paintings as they are created mostly from life.

Painting from life gives my art intimacy, whether it’s a landscape painted en plein air or a portrait painted with live models. Skills gained from my first art career as a theatre set designer, and my acting experience, give me a way to bond with the scene and the ability to tell the stories of my paintings.

Michelle Lamb

My affinity for assemblage is because found objects have an immediacy of use coupled with built-in character which may be derived from it’s unique design, the color or patinas formed from it’s constant use or abandonment to elements or from the mental association we have with it’s original purpose. These add depth to my narrative, whether I choose to amplify, or conversely, to alter and deconstruct it’s original purpose.

Assemblage transforms seemingly worthless elements into significance disregarding the inherent ethical value of recycling. My recombination of individual parts is purposeful and integral to one another rather than serendipitous.

Gestalt psychologist Koffka stated, “The whole is other than the sum of the parts” and this phenomena allows us to see a story without the use of words. My compulsion to integrate pieces into a whole and attaching meaning to them is dichotomously dancing on the fine line of acknowledging this need yet experimenting in defying it’s convention.

Kathy Mitchell-Garton

Kathy Mitchell-Garton

Using a variety of materials, including cloth, beads, thread, photographic snapshots, and maps, I explore the patterns and forms that make up the places I inhabit—my dooryard. I was born in California and raised in Colorado; the Western landscape--its specific vegetation and landforms--is integral to my work. What does it mean to inhabit a place, to breathe it in and allow it to be expressed through my hands, in color, texture, pattern? This is the question in the back of my mind as I work.

The meditative (i.e., slow!) quality of hand-stitching and bead embroidery allows for time to contemplate the images I work with, to understand them on the level of touch, to see associations and their formal qualities. I’m also interested in beauty and the possibilities of beauty in overlooked places—a desiccated leaf might be as beautiful as a flower in full bloom if we drop our judgments.

The beads and stitching create three-dimensional textures and patterns that function to draw in the viewer and to foster an intimate relationship with the work. My hope is that the work encourages close viewing and contemplation of surface and image, and that it creates places where we can slow down, pay attention, and appreciate what’s right under our noses.

Claudia Roulier

I love imagery and use the paint, in my collage paintings, as the vehicle to enhance rather than tell the story. The mystery, the unknown, the wonderment of what could, or might be, inhabits the territory of my imagination. The creatures populating my paintings are the tribes of nightmares and daydreams, depending on the twilight zone of your mind.

The mysterious and magical elements of our lives can read like a novel or a grocery list. I use those items, tweak them and fabricate small reliquaries; artfully encasing these re-discovered objects to hold them, not as junk in time, but as small moments from an otherwise forgotten life. They are transformed into mini shrines and become recycled and redefined, into the lives of other collectors.

Tracey Russell

Numinosity

My recent abstract expressionist work is based upon my perceived awareness of the natural environment. In my studio I’m trying to recapture the subtle mystery or “numinosity” of nature on a 2 dimensional piece of birch panel.

I use many layers of oil paint, wax, graphite, oil stick and pigment By scratching a texture or expressive line into the medium with different tools, the layers are revealed!

Barbara Veatch

Barbara Veatch

My mixed media drawings and paintings look to the natural world for inspiration. I take elements and symbols and utilize them to create abstract narratives. Relationships, emotions, memories, dreams, and celebrations of the beautiful, all figure into my work.

I refer to my approach as “Symbolic Nature”. I utilize acrylics, pastels, charcoal, ink, found and manipulated papers, incised wood, and collage. Pretty much any and all materials are used until the piece punctuates my psyche.